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DOMINIUM AS FOUNDATION OF WYCLIF’S POLITICAL AND ECCLESIOLOGICAL VISION

DOMINIUM AS FOUNDATION OF WYCLIF’S POLITICAL AND ECCLESIOLOGICAL VISION

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7 DOMINIUM AS FOUNDATION OF WYCLIF’S POLITICAL AND ECCLESIOLOGICAL VISION

The resolution of the problems threatening Christianity and the church lay, Wyclif argued, in the hands of the civil lord, who ought take absolute control of all temporal affairs of the church, regulating clerical behavior and using Episcopal oversight to assure the right preaching of Christ’s law. Wyclif’s political thought depends on his conception of dominium, a technical term including both property ownership and juridical authority, the use of which had become politically charged during the Poverty Controversy in the century before Wyclif. Franciscans and papal theorists had developed a complex political theoretical framework in their dispute over the nature of Christian ownership of property and the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and Wyclif used this structure to articulate his vision of how a grace-favored king might relieve the church of the problems inherent in the ownership of property. Wyclif’s political theory is a significant outgrowth of his philosophical and theological thought, and ought not be considered apart from either.

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PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2020. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use. date: 07 June 2020